Stuck
by Pseudinymous
Summary: All hell breaks loose when Lancer thinks he's been overshadowed and enlists young Danny Fenton to help him in any way he can, particularly before the boy's parents try to get involved. But this ghost isn't going to budge even if it wants to, and Danny finds his secret once again at risk while trying to remove it...
1. Something's Off

**Author's Note:**

This won't be a massive longfic, but there will be a few chapters. I'm on a massive Lancer kick right now.

* * *

William Lancer didn't just think there was something wrong with today — he _knew_ it.

Gaps plagued his memory. Great big black holes of nothingness between the time he had breakfast and the time he'd arrived at school, all the way over lunchtime, and somewhere between two and three in the afternoon. By the time he'd regained his wits his students were staring at him as if he'd been possessed, and at this point he no longer was sure he _wasn't_. The Fentons had warned of what it was like to be overshadowed. The gaps in your memory, the distinct feeling that there was some other presence you couldn't detect… and sure as hell, he could feel it creeping at the back of his neck.

Exactly _what_ he'd taught during that memory blank of two to three o'clock he had no idea, but his students seemed unusually absorbed in everything he had to say thereafter.

 _Maybe I'm going mad_ , he thought, and shuddered to realise that idea was entirely preferable to that of being partially possessed. If he was losing his mind, then at least the only person who was a danger to him was himself. Possession posed a different threat in its entirety.

Still, he moved through the rest of the school day, hoping against hope that it just wouldn't happen again. That he would be free, and this day would just go down as an oddity he thought back to occasionally, wondered about, and then forgot.

When his awareness skipped forward from five PM to dinnertime, however, it was far too much to cope with.

Lancer sat in his armchair. "What should I do?" he asked his otherwise empty apartment. His voice bounced lightly off the walls. "What am I _supposed_ to do?"

He thought briefly of going to the Fentons. No. Oh God, no. There'd been horror stories about that. People screaming that it'd turning out they weren't possessed by anything, but the Fentons _thought_ they were. Torturous scenes of attempted ghost extractions _minus the presence of an actual ghost_ flashed through Lancer's mind, and he quickly decided that definitely wasn't the correct course of action.

Who else could he go to? The Guys in White? Not if he wanted to end up as some sort of experiment — and they had access to all his tax records, too!

The teacher tapped his fingers along his arm nervously. "Ehem," he began, again to nothing except his blank white apartment wall, "L-look, if there _is_ a ghost — not that I would think anything so laughable — but if there _is,_ could you please kindly remove yourself from my person?"

Silence.

Lancer had another hour-long blank before he went to bed, and resolved to do something about it in the morning.

Of course, he did not sleep.

* * *

Danny had a feeling, and when Danny had a feeling it wasn't wise to ignore it. The problem was, he hadn't the faintest clue _what_ it was about. By the time he'd gotten to class that morning he was well and truly paranoid, waiting for some ghost to break through the ceiling and cause a riot. But that moment never came, and aside from Sam and Tucker exchanging worried glances at him throughout English, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

Well, except for Lancer.

The bald teacher looked as if his eyes had been peeled awake for several nights, or even as if he had aged by several years. As he spoke it was not without the occasional stutter, and Danny had to wonder what on earth had happened between now and last week to put him in that sort of state. Surely it couldn't have been stress? It wasn't like he had several billion exams to mark — exam period wasn't for another two months. Normally Danny couldn't wait to not pay attention to Lancer during English, but today he just couldn't stop.

"You seem unusually tuned in today, Mr. Fenton," Lancer noted, suspiciously.

Danny tried his best to make it seem like he wasn't lying. "Yeah I just… you know, actually got a full night's sleep last night."

"Well, that would be a change…" Lancer gave a deep sigh, and continued on tiredly with his class, paying too much attention to his watch. It looked like he couldn't wait to leave.

"Yeah, dude, what's up with that?" Tucker murmured, as soon as the lecture half of the class was over and they were permitted to speak quietly as they worked. "I've never seen you so perked up for English. Well — you know, not before the accident, anyway."

"Something's off with Lancer," Danny whispered back. "Look at him. Do you see how tired he is?"

"Maybe he had a late night?" Sam offered, leaning in from the other side of Danny.

"Yeah, but how often do you see that happen? I dunno guys, something's just not sitting right."

Tucker shook his head. "Whatever you say, dude. I mean it's not like he's overshadowed or anything."

The trio stole a quick glance towards Lancer, who was already staring at them when their eyes arrived. They looked away quickly. "Okay," Tucker corrected, "No, you're right, that was weird."

"Maybe we'll just focus on our work before he starts getting even more paranoid." Sam was whispering with her mouth turned slightly sideways, trying to look as though she was as engrossed as she could possibly be in her worksheet. "He's kinda scaring me."

Danny gave a short nod. "Sounds like a plan." He stared down at his worksheet. The boy had almost forgotten how behind he was in English — it made it hard to do any of this work at all. What _was_ Macbeth's motivations for killing the king, anyway? He thought about what he knew about kings and thrones and whatnot. Extra privileges? The king was evil? Maybe Macbeth was trying to usurp the throne? But — Danny's brain started to fall slightly to shambles, here — it wasn't like anyone was calling him Prince Macbeth or anything, were they? How could you get the throne if you weren't prince, anyway?

Lancer continued to steal glances at him throughout the rest of the class, and by the end of it Danny was truly uncomfortable. Sam and Tucker began to march themselves out into the hallway after everyone else. Their friend, however, was instructed to stay behind.

Now Danny was downright suspicious. He walked with hesitant steps up to Lancer's desk, holding tonight's homework in a manner that suggested he already felt guilty that he probably wasn't going to complete it — after all, it was already a miracle that class hadn't been interrupted by _another_ ghost attack. Little could be said for what would happen when he finally got home. But instead of the reprimand Danny was expecting, the teacher gave him a pleading look.

"Mr. Fenton," he began, nervously. "You know a thing or thing or two about ghosts, don't you?"

Danny was stopped in his tracks. His mind began to scream _It's a lie I'm not a ghost!_ , but he squashed that down before it could dare escape his lips. "I don't know, I'm not involved in it like mum and dad are…"

Possibly the worst-placed pause in history occurred then and there between them. Danny could feel his throat attempting to strangle him as all the _what-ifs_ flew through his mind, including the most dangerous _what if he thinks I'm Phantom?_. But that never came. Instead Lancer fidgeted and said something completely different. "I h-have a problem, but your parents are…" he stopped, trying to find the right turn of phrase, and gave up. "Your parents are _mad_. You've learnt about ghosts from them though Danny, right?"

The boy didn't realise it was possible to be relieved about his secret being safe while becoming suddenly uneasy at the same time, but there they were. "I guess I know a bit," he admitted. "What's wrong?"

Lancer's expression bordered on conspiratorial. "Since yesterday there's been gaps in my memory. Large ones. But I've apparently been acting normally. Do you think it's a ghost? Do you think I'm possessed?"

"What, like, overshadowed?!" Danny asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. "Um, Mr. Lancer, if there's a ghost overshadowing you… you don't get to have awareness in between."

"But what if the ghost's coming and going as it pleases?!" Lancer added, desperately. "Please Danny, is there some sort of test you can perform on me or my apartment to get to the bottom of this? I'll give you extra credits! Just don't — _please don't_ — get your parents involved, I don't want to go through —" he shuddered "— one of their _exorcisms_."

Danny's face had twisted into quite an odd expression indeed, somewhere between skeptical, surprised, and ever-so-slightly horrified. "You know this is pretty suss."

" _Please_ , you can bring Jasmine along if safety bothers you, just anything to make sure I'm not being haunted. I—I don't like admitting this, but ghosts terrify me."

… Maybe he could live with this. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Danny tilted his head. "How _many_ extra credits?"

" _Enough for you to pass English_ ," Lancer hissed. Had this been an eighties cartoon, Danny's eyes would have shown up dollar signs.

"Fine, I'll look at it tonight," Danny declared. "You gotta give me some time to sneak the equipment out of my folks lab though, okay? What's your address?"

* * *

"Come on, it can't be _that_ bad," Danny pointed out. "He's probably worrying about nothing. My ghost sense didn't even go off!"


	2. Something's Wrong

**Author's Note:**

Phew. Just started full-time work! It's quite rewarding, but also tiring. :) Having fun writing this in my downtime~.

* * *

"Come on, it can't be _that_ bad," Danny pointed out. "He's probably worrying about nothing. My ghost sense didn't even go off!"

"You know I'm supportive of you earning extra marks any way you can, but are you sure about this?"

Jazz's face was screwed up in thought as she added another ghost hunting-whatsit to the duffle bag. Danny ignored her and kept digging through the weapons vault, trying to find anything that might be useful enough to neglect using his ghost form — just in case anything went _seriously_ wrong. Jazz already had the Fenton Peeler stuffed into her backpack, so that wasn't going to be an option, and they'd already added the detector they'd need.

"Danny," she said, not taking well to being ignored. Danny stuck his head out of the vault and gave her a non-committal shrug.

"Jazz, it'll be fine! I bet he's not even overshadowed. Probably just getting old and losing his memory."

"Memory loss through old age doesn't really happen that way…" Jazz muttered, but she remained focused on the task at hand. "I'm just saying we need to be careful. This is Amity Park. It could be anything."

"Yeah, yeah." Danny slipped back into the dining room and threw the last pieces of equipment in the duffle, then zipped it shut while simply pushing his sister out of the way. "C'mon, before mum and dad come home and realise what we're doing."

* * *

Lancer sat within the plush confines of his favourite armchair, a nervous clammer gripping his whole body, his fingers in particular. They bounced and jittered upon his knees as if trying to escape the unreasonable confines of his own skin, and Lancer for the life of him just could not stop. He'd never been so nervous in his life — and not because of the memory blanks, oh no! This time it was due to the very sudden _lack_ of memory blanks since his little chat with one Daniel Fenton.

If there was a ghost, did this mean that it had heard him? That it knew he was talking about some way to deal with it? What if it hadn't just left, and was instead planning a sort of retribution?

The knock on the door nearly sent him rocketing out of his chair.

"Mr. Lancer?" called Danny's voice, muffled only slightly by the presence of the wood and some very thin plasterboard. Lancer stood up straight like a misshapen metal pole, then directed himself carefully towards the source of the noise.

 _"Mr. Lancer, are you—_ " Danny tried again, just as the man swung the door open. The boy stopped mid-sentence, his mouth still hanging open from his call, and promptly closed it after a moment's deliberation. Jazz was trying not to roll her eyes.

"You're after a discrete, non-Maddie and Jack Fenton ghost hunting solution?" she asked.

"Erm," said Lancer, "Yes, Ms. Fenton. I didn't think you were—" he paused, fishing for the hip and in-fashion way to say things "— _into_ the whole ghost hunting thing."

Jazz quickly lost composure. "Well, I—"

"Times change," Danny filled in, arms crossed over the shoulder strap of the weapon-filled duffle. "So do you want us to get started, or what?"

"Yes! Started! Please!"

Lancer moved right out of the way, letting the Fenton siblings march into his homely environment. It was notably devoid of a lot of homely comforts save for the books; there were no couches, only a single armchair placed in the centre of the room in front of the television. No coffee table existed, nor a dining room table — only a collapsible fold-up single-person table fit for eating TV dinners. The only elaborate or expensive things there seemed to be the chair and the bookcases, which were dutifully maintained if nothing else. Jazz thought Lancer seemed embarrassed to be about the emptiness, however he never raised the point and so she didn't know for sure.

Danny began by pulling out the Fenton Finder. He'd rigged it long ago to stop recognising his own ecto-signature, and he started to shuffle through the lounge room with it, waving the device around in slow circular motions through the air. There was nothing.

"Huh…" said Jazz, who had taken to holding the duffle bag dutifully.

"See, told you there wouldn't be anything," Danny declared, now moving to the dining room and kitchen. "I'll bet you ten bucks the whole house is clean. And he's not possessed either, his eyes are fine."

Lancer followed after them, tentative step after tentative step, although from about two rooms behind.

When Danny's search of Lancer's bedroom and his laundry turned up nothing, all he did was shrug. "Mr. Lancer, you can come out now! There's nothing anywhere in here! Can't even find trace evidence of a ghost having been here earlier."

"H-huh," said Lancer, though his voice told them both he was still clearly rattled. Danny was just about to turn the Fenton Finder off as Lancer entered the room, but suddenly the little device erupted with noise.

" _GHOST DIRECTLY AHEAD. YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE SOME SORT OF MORON TO NOT NOTICE THE GHOST DIRECTLY AHEAD."_

Jazz made a sort of strange choking sound that was about as far from ladylike as one could get. Danny nearly dropped the detector.

"But he's not overshadowed! His eyes are completely normal!" Danny sputtered, gesturing wildly at a very spooked Lancer. "Look, I'm not the only one seeing this, right Jazz?"

"What's going on? _Is there a ghost inside—_ "

"There's no ghost inside you at all, Mr. Lancer!" Danny shot back, before Lancer could get more of his panic out. "I thought _maybe_ you could be intermittently overshadowed — like, possessed — but if you were we'd pick up the signature of the ghost in your house. That's because it would have to be jumping in, then back out."

"Danny, we tested the detector before we left the house," Jazz warned, backing away a little from Lancer. This did nothing to calm his mood. "Something's not right here."

"I'll tell you what's not right," said Lancer, quickly. " _I'm stuck, that's what's not right_!"


	3. Something's Very Wrong

**Author's Note:**

AaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa...: An Autobiography By Me

* * *

Lancer's eyes had changed, but not in a way that indicated possession — no. They'd grown wider, become wild and desperate-looking. The person the Fenton siblings were staring at was no longer the teacher they knew and "loved", but something else entirely, simply by the way it moved, and the way it spoke.

" _That's not Mr. Lancer_!" Jazz yelped, but Lancer rolled his eyes.

"Oh, you think? Whatever gave you that impression, girlie?"

Danny was far more on the business side of things than his rather startled sister. "Who are you?!" he demanded, pointing an upside-down finger at the man. "Are you a ghost?"

Lancer's face was buried within his hands already. "Goddamnit _yes_ , I'm a ghost! And I'd rather not suffer the indignity of being identified while _stuck_ inside this boring, _balding_ little man!"

Danny opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it once more in order to speak. "You mean you're stuck overshadowing him?"

"I feel like I'm superglued!" the ghost hissed, using Lancer's mouth. It started to wave the teacher's arms around emphatically, as if to further its point. "Even worse, it seems to be I'm not even superglued on properly! He keeps regaining awareness and then _I_ pass out! Not that silly little humans like you would ever be able to sympathise—"

"So, uh… wait up a second," said Danny. "The reason we're here is that _he—"_ he gestured at Lancer and the ghost, as if this made much of a difference "—doesn't want you there. And if you don't want to be there either, then that sort of suits everyone, right?"

"… Right?" said the ghost.

"So… we'd like to try to help remove you?" Jazz tried, having finally surmounted her own terror.

The ghost that was unwillingly attached to Lancer crossed Lancer's arms, and tapped Lancer's foot. "And how do you intend on doing that, exactly?"

Danny and Jazz exchanged a glance. The small half-ghost bit down on his lip as he asked, "He's completely unconscious right now, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

" _Yes_!" said the ghost, impatiently.

"Well, in that case…" Danny walked right up to the ghost. Jazz seemed to be almost biting her own nails, but it wasn't like it bothered him. He saw ghosts all the time — good ones, bad ones, and for the most part they just wanted to be left alone. This'd be a piece of cake, right? The ghost even _wanted_ to be removed. How often did an opportunity to resolve things so easily just walk up and sit down right in front of him?

"What are you doing?" asked the ghost, a little urgently. Danny cocked his head — it wasn't like a ghost to be panicky at being approached by a human.

"I'm _going_ to remove you."

" _With your bare hands_?!" it sputtered. "But how?!"

"Like this!" said Danny, drawing his right arm back and flooding it with ectoplasmic power. It willingly shifted to intangibility even while he remained in human form, and the ghost gave an audible yelp of surprise, but Danny ignored this. Best if he got it over fast. Best if he—

The ghost's stance changed. It was staring down at Danny, eyes wide with terror, as the boy's intangible hand raced towards its chest and made contact.

There was a sickening _crack_!

Jazz flinched away. Danny had two years of ghost fighting experience under his belt, and thus even in his human form, packed a fair bit of muscle that not too many people knew about. A sound like that did not bode well for the teacher's ribs, and Lancer did not so much fall backwards as he did get thrown.

Horrified, Danny checked and re-checked his apparently still-intangible arm.

That wasn't supposed to happen. You couldn't phase through ghosts, but humans were fair game. Danny was supposed to just collect the ghost and force it into intangibility and _out_ of Lancer's body, while giving Lancer nothing more than a rather distinct feeling of total violation. But things hadn't worked that way — he hadn't been able to phase through Lancer. And now Lancer was on the floor, rolling around after receiving the punch of his life.

"Oh God, I'm sorry!" the boy finally spat out, running up to Lancer with his sister in tow. His arm remained in its intangible state; he seemed to forget about this. "Hey, hey! Are you all right? Is Lancer all right?!"

" _Daniel Fenton!_ " Lancer gasped, and in only a moment Danny realised that his teacher was back in control. " _What in the name of Nineteen Eighty-Four was that?!_ "

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the ghost—" he had to stop mid-sentence, because his sister hit him.

" _Your arm_!" she hissed.

"—th-the ghost made me do it! It's still got me!" Danny sputtered, holding up the intangible arm as an example, and then began to throw it around unconvincingly as if he had no control over it. "I have to go back to the supply kit!"

And he did, managing to look as though he were running in several different directions as he went, while Jazz was left to tend to Lancer.

"Hey, it's going to be okay!" she told him, attempting to help the man up. He didn't seem keen on taking this help but he also wasn't keen on staying on the floor, and the messy result was a kind of reluctant attempt at sitting straight that ended with Jazz doing most of the work. "Just a — a slight setback!"

"A slight setback?" said Lancer, but with an awful wheeze. " _Your brother's possessed_!"

"It'll be fine! All in a day's work… haha…" she managed, looking nervously back in the supposed direction of her brother. "Right Danny?!"

"Something like that!" he yelled back from the other room, hidden and out of view. There was some strange and rather violent sounds coming from the source of his voice, followed finally by the distinct sucking sound of the Fenton Thermos, and finally silence.

"What in Gulliver's Travels is going on?"

Danny limped back into view, arm notably back to its regular state of total tangibility, holding the Fenton Thermos as if he'd done a deed of the truly brave that day. Jazz turned back to her teacher, with a long sigh.

"Sometimes I wish I knew, Mr. Lancer. Sometimes I wish I knew."


	4. Something's Going to Go Wrong

**Author's Note:**

Ever since I started my other story, Layman Scripts, my normal chapter length has been something like 5-6K words. But I suppose the comparatively puny length of these chapters is helping me maintain an actually decent update schedule. It's kind of nice, yeah...

Thank-you to all those who've reviewed, I appreciate every single one of you - reviews help to keep fanfiction writers' souls alive. ;) Hopefully I'll be able to reply very soon.

* * *

"So, uhh, good news and bad news," Danny proposed, after Lancer had managed to collect himself enough to stand up. Granted, _standing_ may not have been exactly the correct term; he was propped upright only by Jazz's struggles against his side, and she was only barely strong enough to make any difference at all.

"In order, Mr. Fenton…"

By this point Lancer sounded only tired rather than angry. Getting winded did that to you — if anyone knew that, it was Danny, who'd taken punches to the gut and lungs more times than he cared to count. Nevertheless, his teacher wasn't going to like the news, though it was probably good that at this point he seemed too tired to argue with whatever it was.

" _Well,_ the good news is, there was a ghost here, and I just sucked it into the Fenton Thermos. You're safe from that now. But the, uhh, the, ehehehe… the _bad_ news…"

Jazz sensed her brother wasn't going to spit it out any time this year. "Well, it would seem that there's another ghost and that you actually _are_ possessed," she said, rather quickly. Lancer gained an unhealthy pallor worthy of those due to have six feet of fresh soil piled on top of them.

"So when I blanked out just then—"

"—That'd be because the ghost was in control," Danny finished, his expression so guilty that it couldn't be hidden. "But don't worry! It doesn't wanna be there anymore than _you_ want it to be there — it's just that it can't get back out."

"And that's supposed to stop me from worrying _how_?!"

Jazz shrugged, which decidedly failed while still holding Lancer up. Wisely, she guided him back over to his lone armchair. "Well, it doesn't seem to be hostile."

No. Lancer wasn't having a bar of this. His hand had crept up over where his heart supposedly resided (Danny had never been able to prove that Lancer and all of his surprise pop quizzes actually owned one), and he laid back into that plush headrest with a sigh that might have been closer to a death rattle. Surprisingly melodramatic, but then again he did specialise in books with plenty of such flavour.

"Maybe we should give you a moment to calm down…" said Jazz as she unsuccessfully looked around for a seat of her own, but Lancer was shaking his head.

"Since when are ghosts not hostile?!"

"Danny Phantom's not hostile…" Danny muttered, saltily.

" _Aside_ from him! I'm sure we're not dealing with Danny Phantom around here!" Lancer shot back. Danny said nothing.

Jazz was well past the point of biting her lip and was now chewing upon it in such a manner that suggested she might tear it open if she wasn't careful. "Maybe you should just get some rest for a while, Danny and I need to talk about something."

Lancer actually laughed. "Yes. _Rest_. Ulysses, I'll try."

* * *

"Well what are we supposed to do? He's out there having an anxiety attack in the other room!" Jazz hissed, though her brother seemed equally panicked. "We've gotta get that ghost out. Do you think you could just point the Fenton Thermos at him and do it that way?"

Danny's arms were crossed, and he shook his head. "It doesn't work like that, Jazz. And even if it did, the ghost isn't weakened. You gotta weaken the ghost before you catch it."

Jazz looked away. "Didn't seem to matter much all those times I accidentally caught you…"

" _Are you calling me weak_?"

"No!"

There was a pause.

"So none of these weapons are going to work without hurting Lancer," Danny pointed out, arms still firmly crossed. A frown was creeping down each side of his chin, although one side more than the other. "And I can't phase through him and just fish the ghost out that way."

Another pause.

"… What about the Fenton Ghost Catcher?" said Jazz, slowly. "Do you know if that thing ever actually worked?"

"A little too well, actually…" Danny muttered. "But it's huge! And mum and dad will notice it's missing immediately!"

"Then we need to bring Lancer back to ours when they're not there. I could create a distraction while you…"

"Forcibly throw him through the ghost catcher, right?" Danny sighed. "And then deal with Lancer being out of it, and Lancer screaming at the sight of the ghost, and then the ghost being all out of it too from being separated. This'd better be an amazing distraction, Jazz."

Jazz grinned a grin Danny had scarcely seen on the girl. "Oh, I've got one all right. Just you wait."

* * *

Lancer was decidedly Unhappy. It wasn't the sort of unhappy you could spell without a capital letter; there wasn't enough emphasis involved in exactly how Unhappy he was. He was the sort of Unhappy that involved homicide if one was so inclined, and a very large yet fearful scowl if one was not. He put each foot in front of the other with excessive force as if to illustrate this point, or perhaps to somehow make the ghost inhabiting his body feel uncomfortable. He of course had no idea whether he was succeeding, although in reality considering the ghost was currently unconscious, he wasn't.

"Seriously, not all ghosts are bad! Even if our parents say they are," Danny insisted, but Lancer ignored him as if the words hadn't so much as even been uttered. Nevertheless, Danny was persistent: "We've met lots of friendly ones!"

" _Friendly_?"

Danny tripped over his own words and corrected himself. "Well, they've been _okay_ , anyway."

"I can't believe I'm letting the two of you do this…" Lancer muttered. "The last people I wanted to see about my… _issue_ is the two most deranged people in town, although I must say you're both giving them a run for their money."

Jazz had to hold herself back from trying to defend herself as 'the normal one'. Now that she was _trying_ to get into the ghost hunting by helping Danny too, she'd lost the privilege to call herself that. At best she was the 'comparatively normal one'. This was either going to bode fabulously or disastrously for her future career, but for now that wasn't what she was thinking about.

Jazz's eyes flicked up to the massive Emergency Ops Center above FentonWorks, and knew what she had to do.


End file.
